period 5: 1844-1877 manifest destiny, civil war, and reconstruction

Period 5: 1844-1877Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction

Key Concepts

• As the nation expanded, sectional tensions and the slavery issue intensified.

• Various tensions within and between regions came together to cause the Civil War.

• A fundamental disagreement between Northerners and Southerners about the Constitution contributed to the Civil War.

• Slavery became a crisis in the context of western expansion.

• Compromise on slavery, dating from the writing of the Constitution, became harder and eventually impossible by 1860.

Many social scientists view the Civil War as a watershed in American historical development, for it shaped the future of the nation in a number of ways:

• The war was a catalyst in the industrialization of the United States, and the industrial capitalist class became dominant.

• The federal government was deemed paramount in relation to the states.

• Race and class relations were profoundly affected by the war.• The war further stimulated and accelerated industrialization.• The war forever ended the institution of slavery.• There were other causes besides slavery. A deeper

understanding of the Civil War reveals tensions in this nation prior to the war, though all were in one way or another affected by the slavery issue. Some of these tensions came from regional differences, some from political differences.

Manifest Destiny Fulfilled

• James K Polk became president in March 1845 and had several foreign policy objectives in mind:• The settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute with

Britain.• It was resolved the same time relations with Mexico were

unraveling. In the Wbster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), the US and Britain settled the boundary dispute between Maine and Canada and also agreed to suppress the slave trade. However they soon began bickering over the Oregon Territory’s northern border. In the Oregon Treaty (1846), the nations agreed to settle the dispute peacefully by extending the Oregon Territory-Canadian border along the 49th parallel.

• The acquisition of California• Incorporation of Texas in the Union• John Tyler had already paved the way for Texas statehood,

and despite strong opposition from antislavery forces, Texas was admitted on December 29th, 1845.

• He achieved all of these goals.

The Mexican-American War

• The relationship between the US and Mexico deteriorated further when the US formally annexed Texas in 1845.

• Polk not only wanted the Texas territory, he also wanted the California-New Mexico region as well.

• After the failure of the Slidell mission to purchase the territory from Mexico; Polk resorted to a more aggressive maneuver of sending US troops into the disputed area. Many Americans believed the territory belonged to Mexico but when hostilities erupted the US declared war on Mexico.

The Mexican-American War

• The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) ended the war and included:• Mexico recognized the American claims to the

area north of the Rio Grande.• Mexico ceded California and New Mexico to

the US in return for $15 million.• The US agreed to assume approximately $3

million in debts Mexico owed to American citizens.

• President Polk was not satisfied with the terms of the treaty. He believed the US should have received even more territory from the Mexicans.

The Effects of Expansion

• As the US gained territory and expanded westward, debates over who would control the new land intensified in Congress and among the people. The debate over slavery in the new territory flared with the introduction of the Wilmot Proviso which, if passed, would have prohibited slavery in all territory acquired after 1846-though it was passed by the House of Representatives, it never for out of the more sectionally-balanced Senate. The new land, though beneficial to the nation in many ways, exacerbated already existing tensions that leaders spent years attempting to eradicate through compromise.

Regional Economic Differences

• The types of economies that developed in the 3 regions of the US in the first half of the nineteenth century had a powerful impact on political decisions and goals. The South grew important cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, sugar, and rice. The North was far more industrialized than the South or West, having shifted from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture and produced more foodstuffs, such as corn and wheat, than the other 2 regions. The North came to rely more and more on western foodstuffs. In return, westerners became consumers of northern industrial and commercial products. By the 1850s the North and West were economically joined , and the North’s economy was rapidly evolving into a modern-day industrial amd commercial system.


• In the South, cash crops such as rice and tobacco were grown extensively. Yet no commodity was more important to the South than cotton. Cotton was one of the most important commodities in the world in the nineteenth century. Factories in the Northern states as well as European countries such as Britain and France needed cotton for their important textile industries. The most powerful producers of cotton in the South were the planter-slaveholders. This class, a fraction of the entire Southern population, was politically, economically, and socially important. About 25% of the South’s white population were slave owners. Many of the whites who owned no slaves resented the planter-slaveholder class. However, their fear of economic loss if slavery was abolished as well as their belief system that whites were superior to blacks were powerful forces in maintaining the status quo. The planters made all of the political and economic decisions.


Characteristics of North’s Economy• Banking• Shipping• Insurance• Small and large

business ownership-creating a middle, or bourgeois, class

• Some agriculture-both commercial and subsistence farming

• Availability of wage laborers

Characteristics of the South’s Economy• Dependent on the plantation

system, the center of economic, political, cultural, and social life in the South

• Slave labor, the dominant labor force in the South producing the greatest value in the region

• Majority of the white population engaged in subsistence farming

• Yeoman farmers who owned small or medium sized commercial farms, a small proportion of the white population

• A small urban bourgeois (or middle) class


Political Objectives of the North• Tariff, a tax on imports to

protect the North’s growing industries

• Federal aid in the development of infrastructure-those things necessary for business to flourish, such as roads, canals, bridges, and railroads

• A loose immigration policy which would provide cheap labor

• Availability of free or cheap land in the Qwest for settlement and investment opportunities creating new markets for Northern manufactured goods

• The containment of slavery

Political Objectives of the South• Low tariffs because of the planter

class’s dependence on trade with Britain-cotton in return for consumer goods

• The expansion of slavery for political, economic, and ideological reasons

• Opposition to a cheap public land policy, which would force the planter-slaveholder to compete politically, economically, and ideologically with the independent farmer of the West

• Make it far more difficult for the planter-slaveholder class to exert control over new territories

• Expose poor whites and even slaves to the capitalist and democratic views expressed by Northern emigrants to the new territories

Tensions over Political Theories: Northerners believed in the contract theory of government, whereas Southerners believed in the compact theory.

Compact Theory• The states, not the people,

created the national government.

• The laws of the states are supreme when in conflict with the laws and actions of the federal government.

• The states can declare the laws of the federal government null and void if they deem it necessary and appropriate.

• The logical conclusion of this theory if taken to the extreme is secession.

Contract Theory• The people, not the

states, created the Union.

• The federal government is supreme.

• Thus, the federal laws and actions take precedence over state laws and actions.

Tensions Over Political Theories

Examples of Compact Theory

• The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798)

• The Hartford Convention (1815)

• The South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828)

• The Ordinance of Nullification (1832)

Examples of Contract Theory

• The various decisions made by the Marshall Court

• John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government

• Texas v. White (1869)

Attitudes in the North and South

• Many Northerners were content to allow slavery to reside in the Southern states. Only when Southern leaders sought to expand slavery did many Northerners become concerned. Most Northerners were not morally opposed to slavery. Politically and economically the expansion of slavery worried many Northern citizens and their political leaders. To them, slavery was the root of a social, economic, political, and cultural system that they disdained, partly because it was antiethical to the values of a vibrant, expanding capitalist system. Many Northerners saw the South as static. There was little social or economic mobility, little industry, and therefore few opportunities for wage laborers.


• Southern political leaders, on the other hand, ironically referred to Northern wage earners as “wage slaves.” To them, the North was a mess. Northern cities were congested, and workers earned poverty wages and worked and lived in dismal conditions. Southerners saw slavery as a paternalistic system that provided slaves with the basic needs of life. Furthermore, they argued, a slave was an investment; a Northern wage earner could be replaced. Although their owners often horribly mistreated slaves, Southern apologists claimed the opposite was true. Slaves, they maintained, were too valuable to mistreat.


• Containing slavery became important to Northerners, who believed that as slavery expanded, Northern industrial capitalism would be limited. In fact, a new political party emerged in the 1850s, the Republicans, whose political goals were “free labor, free soil, free men.” The industrial capitalists, owners of the North’s factories and workshops, had the most to gain by containing the spread of slavery and expanding capitalism. For example, as capitalism expanded, they hoped to expand the labor pool, which in turn would drive down the wages they would have to pay to workers. Just as planters dominated the South, the industrial capitalists profoundly influenced the North’s political, economic, and cultural system. What is more, their political and economic objectives often clashed with those of the South’s planter class.


• Helping to shape the debate on the containment of slavery were the abolitionists, whose ranks were made p of whites and blacks. Unlike many who supported the containment of slavery abolitionists sought to eliminate slavery. Some would simply free the slaves. Others, like Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s, sought to send free slaves to Africa. Whereas some abolitionists sought the gradual abolition of slavery, others (among them Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, and Sojourner Truth) favored an immediate end-peaceful or violent-to the institution.

The Breakdown of Compromise

• Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, various differences between the North and South were resolved. But the relationship deteriorated over the issue of territorial expansion. By 1860 all attempts at compromise failed, and within a year the nation was in the midst of the bloody Civil War that would cost over 600,000 Americans their lives. You need to understand the important decisions that shaped the political debate over such issues as the tariff and the expansion and containment of slavery.

Compromises Before 1850

• The compromises at the Constitutional Convention

• The Missouri Compromise (1820)• Maintain the balance of free and slave states

• The Nullification Crisis and the Compromise of 1833• Tariff issues

• The Compromise of 1850• Slavery issues

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

• Senator Stephen A. Douglas favored the passage of a bull that would route a major railroad line through Illinois. Even though this would stimulate the further settlement of the West, not everyone was convinced that the plan had merit. Little did they know that this compromise would touch off intense sectional hostilities. The features of the bill included the following:• The Nebraska Territory would be divided into the Kansas and

Nebraska territories.• Settlers in these areas would determine the status of slavery-

popular sovereignty• Although it sounded reasonable to Southerners, the

Northerners were outraged. Both territories were located north of the Missouri Compromise which was supposed to be closed to slavery. It passed Congress and was signed by the President. This angered the Northerners and Westerners so much that they formed the Republican party in hopes that it would take a stand against the South’s “slavocracy”.

The Dred Scott decision (1857)

• The U.S. Supreme Court did not play a significant role in the conflict over slavery until this decision. Scott was a slave who had been taken from Missouri, a slave state, to Wisconsin, a free territory, by his owner. He resided there for 2 years until he was returned to Missouri. Scott sued for his freedom, contending that his residence in a free state made him a free citizen. Unfortunately for Scott, the chief justice of the Supreme Court was Roger Taney, a pro-Southern Democrat. Under Taney, the Court’s ruling went well beyond the underlying principle of the case:


• Because Congress did not have the power to deny a citizen the right to his or her property without due process-and Scott, as a slave, was considered property-Congress could not prevent a slaveholder from taking his property to a free state. Thus the Missouri Compromise was invalid. There were now no limits to the potential expansion of slavery. Not satisfied with this decision, the Court went further.

• The Constitution had not provided citizenship rights for blacks. Therefore, Scott had no constitutional right to sue his master in federal court.


• The South was overjoyed with the decision but the North was outraged. To more and more Northerners, the Republican Party seemed to represent their views best. The Republicans were a coalition of:• Free-Soilers, a political party formed in 1848 to represent western

farmers by advocating a Homestead Law, internal improvements, and the containment of slavery.

• Northern capitalists, who favored a high protective tariff, internal improvements, liberal immigration laws, and a sound money and banking system.

• Social reformers• Abolitionists• Northern Democrats who felt betrayed by their party’s support for

the Kansas-Nebraska Act• Members of the Whig Party who sought the containment of slavery• Various labor groups in the North

• Democrat James Buchanan defeated the first Republican candidate in the 1856 election. In the 1860 presidential race, the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won but his election would convince the South to secede.

The Road to WarA Series of Events in the late 1850s seemed to propel the nation to war

• Ostend Manifesto• Southern-supported plan to take Cuba from

Spain by force after Spain refused to sell the island to the US due to fears of slave rebellion there. Northerners viewed the plan as an attempt to expand slavery beyond the US’s borders.

The Road to War

• “Bleeding Kansas”• The hostility in 1856 was a prelude to the full scale war that would

begin five years later. The conflict arose over whether Kansas would enter the union as a free or slave state. Since popular sovereignty was to decide the issue it seemed that the majority of Kansas’s anitslavery (spread not abolishment) farmers would align Kansas with the free states. Proslavery sympathizers in neighboring Missouri were not about to stand by while their neighbor cast its lot with the free states. Soon “border ruffians” crossed into Kansas with the intention of making it a slave state. In response, Northern opponents of slavery like the New England Emigrant Society began sending supporters to Kansas. Fighting soon erupted as advocates of slavery created a government in Lecompton, Kansas and their opponents established an anitslavery government in Topeka. Shortly thereafter, proslavery forces massacred citizens f the anitslavery town of Lawrence. In retaliation, a violent abolitionist named John Brown organized his own massacre of proslavery advocates at Pottawatomie Creek. It seemed as if Kansas would enter as a free state until the new president James Buchanan accepted the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, which would admit Kansas as a slave state. Some Democrats, including Stephen Douglas, joined forces with Republicans in 1858 to oppose the Lecompton Constitution, and Kansas ultimately entered as a free state.

The Road to War

• Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)• Having served only one term in the House,

Lincoln challenged the nationally recognized Illinois senator Stephen Douglas in his campaign for reelection. Despite the fact that Lincoln lost the election, the debates thrust him into the national spotlight, for Lincoln had found a responsive chord with opponents of slavery. Although no abolitionist himself, Lincoln’s rhetoric matched the sentiments of those who were opposed to the expansion of slavery as well as those who morally condemned it.

The Road to War

• John Brown’s Harpers Ferry Raid (1859)• John Brown’s crusade to eradicate slavery was indeed

noble, but his methods were violent. He believed that the planter-slaveholders who maintained a violent system of human ownership could be compelled to end slavery only through violent means. In what many consider a misguided attempt to start a slave rebellion, Brown and his supporters seized the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Hoping that slaves would flock to his cause and take up arms, Brown was instead met by US Army troops led by Robert E. Lee. Captured and ultimately hanged, Brown became a martyr to many Northerners, which in turn made Southerners suspect that Northerners were involved in or least supportive of violent slave rebellions.

The Road to War

• Though many did not know it then, one more significant event would shatter the Union. It was the presidential election of 1860 that led to secession and civil war. It showed just how divided the nation was. Four candidates sought presidency:• The Republican candidate was Abraham Lincoln, whose major political

platform was the containment of slavery.• The Democrats split between Northern candidate- Stephen Douglas

who continued to advocate for popular sovereignty- and a Southern candidate- John C. Breckinridge who opposed the containment of slavery.

• The Constitutional Unionists ran John Bell. His position was generally ambiguous, though preserving the Union seemed to be his primary goal.

• Lincoln was elected despite the fact that he received only about 39% of the popular vote. In most Southern states his name did not even appear on the ballot. Because Lincoln was determined to stop the spread of slavery, South Carolina believed its future in the federal union was threatened: more and more new free states would dramatically tip the balance of Congress in the North’s favor. Shortly after his election, South Carolina seceded from the US , followed by six other Deep South states.

The Road to War

• The new Southern government, called the Confederate States of America, elected Jefferson Davis-a former secretary of war and US senator-as its president with former US senator Alexander Stephens as his vice president. The other Southern states were waiting to see if Lincoln would use force against South Carolina when he entered the White House.

• Lincoln had to wait nearly a year and half after his election to become president. During that time, Kentucky senator John Crittenden proposed a compromise that would essentially return the nation to 1820 and the Missouri Compromise. This last-ditch attempt to prevent war failed as many Republicans, including Lincoln, believed the proposal would allow slavery to spread to the territories.

The War

• The opening shots occurred on April 12, 1861, when Confederate shore batteries fired on Fort Sumter off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, compelling the fort’s commander to surrender. Although seen as a military victory in the South, it was a political victory for the Lincoln administration because the South had opened hostilities.

• Lincoln immediately called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion, whereby four more Southern states seceded. The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia.

• In what became known as the Trent Affair, a Union warship stopped and seized a British ship carrying Mason and Slidell, Confederate diplomats to Britain and France, and arrested the two. Lincoln was forced to release them for fear that Britain would declare war on the United States.

Comparison of Union and Confederate Strengths and Weaknesses

Union• Population: 22 million• Offensive war (had to

conquer the south)• Considerably more

factories, wealth; a much more diverse economy than the South’s

• Strong central government• Generals who understood

the nature of “total war,” such as Grant and Sherman

Confederate• Population: 6 million• Defensive war• Economy is backward

and under-developed; relies on overseas demand for cotton

• New and weak central government

• Initially better generals, such as Lee and Jackson

The War

• At the outbreak of hostilities, Lincoln had Confederate sympathizers arrested and in the process suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a fundamental legal right that requires the government to bring specific charges against accused and prevents it from jailing an individual indefinitely. Justice Taney ruled that Lincoln had violated their civil rights and ordered them released.

• Initially the South was successful in waging war against the Union. The Union army had a considerably more difficult task of having to capture and hold major strategic areas. It had to conquer the South, whereas the Confederacy hoped that if the war dragged on, the Northern public would soon grow tires of “Lincoln’s war” and sue for peace. The result of the war, however, was in large part ordained by the enormous population and industrial and transportation advantages of the North.

The War: This is a list of major military

engagements. In general, the Union named battles after the nearest body of water (in italics) and the Confederates named them after the nearest town (in parentheses)

• First Bull Run, 1861 (Manassas) • Confederate victory; led the North to realize this would not be a “Ninety Day

War”• Peninsula Campaign, 1862 (Seven Days)

• Confederate victory made possible by the brilliant leadership of Robert E Lee• Second Bull Run, 1862 (Manassas)

• Confederate victory• Antietam, 1862 (Sharpsburg)

• Union victory. After a string of Union defeats, this victory which turned back a Confederate invasion of the North, allowed Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation several months after the battle. This decreed that slaves living in those states that were in open rebellion against the US would be forever free. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the four border states (Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware); for though they were slave states, they had not seceded. Lincoln had enough on his hands without inviting more states to take up arms against the government. This battle therefor changed the nature of the war from a war to preserve the union to a battle over slavery.



• Fredericksburg, 1862• Confederate victory

• Monitor and Merrimac, 1862• In order to break the Union blockade of Southern ports, which was

designed to prevent the South from exporting cotton and importing needed supplies (the Anaconda Plan), the Confederacy launched the Merrimac, an ironclad ship. The Merrimac proceeded to wreak havoc on the wooden Union blockade ships. But the North had not been idle in its development of an ironclad vessel. The North’s ironclad, the Monitor, fought the Merrimac to a draw. The consequences of this famous naval battle were twofold: it rendered wooden fleets obsolete, and the union, given its vast resources, began to build a fleet of ironclad warships, which it used to gain control of important waterways and defeat Confederate forts that guarded such important rivers as the Mississippi.



• Gettysburg, 1863• Union victory. Considered the most famous battle fought on

North American soil, the defeat of the second and last major Confederate invasion of the North was the turning point of the war. The Confederates had reached their high-water mark, a point from which their fortunes steadily declined.

• Vicksburg, 1863• Union victory. This gave control of the Mississippi River to the

North effectively cutting the Confederacy in half.• Sherman’s “March to the Sea,”, 1864• Union victory. The Confederacy was again cut in half.

• Petersburg Campaign, 1864-1865• Union victory. Grant closed in on the Confederate capital.

• Appomattox Court House, 1865• Confederate General Lee surrendered to General Grant,

effectively ending the war. Five days later, Lincoln was assassinated by a Confederate smpathizer, john Wilkes Booth.

Impact of War

• Both the North and South were transformed dramatically by the war. Slavery was of course abolished (the Thirteenth Amendment), the planter class was defeated, and the South quickly came under military rule. The war also marked the emergence of the US as a nation-state. It was no longer a confederation of states. The US became a federal union.

• Even as it fought a major civil war, the North was changing. During the war it had passed a number of important acts, such as:• The Morrill Tariff of 1861, a high protective tariff• The Homestead Act of 1862, leading to further development

of the West• The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, simulating the growth

and development of higher education• A banking act that created (in 1863) the National Banking

System• A loose immigration law

The Impact of War

• The US government also continued to develop the transcontinental railroad, further linking East and West, and it provided black Americans the opportunity to fight for their freedom as soldiers in the union Army, which they did in considerable numbers- 180,000.

• Because of the application of industry and technology to warfare in the period of 1861-1865, the Civil War is sometimes seen as the first modern war. The use of submarines, aerial reconnaissance, repeating rifles, and ironclad ships is a short list of new technologies applied to waging that war. Moreover, the Napoleonic tactics, rampant disease, and amputations together with modern warfare led to astronomical death tolls. War also became considerably more personal and shocking with the extensive use of photography in the Civil War.

• Extraordinarily, the North also held a democratic presidential election in the midst of the Civil War, despite the fact that the incumbent, Lincoln, seemed certain to lose. But he didn’t. By late spring 1865, the American Civil War was over. But a new battle was looming, one that would attempt to combat racial injustice and shape the way Americans viewed their newly reunited nation.

period 5: 1844-1877 manifest destiny, civil war, and reconstruction

Documents

civil war

mexicanamerican war

mexico polk

debts mexico

mexico ceded california

texas territory

us troops

californianew mexico